Christie Palmerston

Cristofero Palmerston Carandini or Christopher "Christie" Palmerston (c. 1850 – 15 January 1897) was an Australian explorer and prospector in North Queensland. He led several expeditions during the last quarter of the 19th century including the discovery of a route along the Mowbray River, which eventually led to the founding of Port Douglas.

Early life It has been claimed that Palmerston was the natural son of Lord Palmerston. However, Palmerston was born in Melbourne, at the time in the Colony of New South Wales, unless he was younger than normally thought, to Casino Jerome Carandini, the 10th Marquis of Sarzano and Marie Burgess, an English-born opera singer. Palmerston was baptised Cristofero Palmerston Carandini. This is the name he gives on his marriage registration in 1886, when he listed his father as Casino Carandini. His elder brother Frank succeeded to the marquessate upon their father's death in 1870, and his sister Isabella Sara married in 1886, Sir Norman Montgomery Abercrombie Campbell, 10th Baronet.

Employment and conviction in central Queensland In 1868 Christopher Palmerston, in a departure from the theatrical heritage of his family, was employed as a stockman on the Willangi cattle station near St Lawrence in the Broadsound area of central coastal Queensland. The station was run by brothers William and Mark Christian who were powerful squatters in the region. While droving cattle to Rockhampton in early 1869, Palmerston rode off on one of his employer's horses and sold the saddle to a stable owner. He was arrested for horse stealing and later convicted. Palmerston appealed the decision but it was dismissed and he was sentenced to two years in a Brisbane prison.

Prospecting and early expeditions

Palmerston then worked in the Palmer River Gold Rush of 1872–1874. Old timers on the field noted that while Palmerston never seemed to do any mining he was always flush with gold and rumours abounded that Palmerston, with his Aboriginal men, were murdering miners for their gold. However, it was not until around 1876 during the Hodgkinson River Gold Rush that Palmerston began to be known as a pathfinder.

Towards the end of the 1880s on the Russell River field, as the field played out and was abandoned by European miners, Palmerston induced Chinese miners to come to the diggings by promising them certified amounts of gold per day and guaranteeing protection from Aboriginal attack. He charged them £1 per head and the offer was taken up by 30 miners with a further 200 following soon after. The promises were hollow but then, as a standover man, with the backing of armed Aboriginal gang, he extorted money from the Chinese, prevented supplies from reaching the diggings so that he could charge exorbitant prices for meat and effectively imprisoned the Chinese diggers by beating up any miner who attempted to leave the field. A Police Magistrate in Innisfail later found against a Chinese businessman in a civil suit brought against Palmerston, but a Senior Magistrate, W S Walsh, in a report to the Colonial Secretary found the evidence more than sufficient for a conviction.

Just after dawn Palmerston and his men opened fire from three sides, the river being on the fourth side. Palmerston wrote that afterwards he reduced "heaps of war implements to ashes" and took two young boys as captives. The boys escaped during the night, "shackles and all".

Later life and death Palmerston settled down in Townsville and married Teresa Rooney at St Joseph's Church on 6 December 1886; they had one daughter. Palmerston moved to Borneo and then Malaya where he contracted fever in the jungle and died at Kuala Pilah on 15 January 1897.